I go back to the queen’s rooms, fear snapping at my heels all the way. The ladies ask me what is happening and I tell them I have seen the arrest of two of the king’s firmest friends. I don’t tell them what the Duke of Norfolk said. I am too afraid to say the words. Lady Woods tells me that my kinsman Henry Courtenay has been dismissed from the Privy Council under suspicion of plotting for the princess. I give as good a performance as I can manage of a woman shocked by extraordinary news.
“Don’t you write to Lady Mary?” Lady Woods says. “Don’t you stay in touch with her? Your former charge? Though everyone knows that you love her and came back to court to serve her?”
“I write to her only through Lord Cromwell,” I say. “I have an affection for her, of course. I write with the queen.”
“But you don’t encourage her?”
I glance across the room. Jane Boleyn is holding herself very still over her sewing, quite as if she is not thinking about her sewing at all. “Of course not,” I say. “I took the oath like everyone else.”
“Not quite everyone,” Jane volunteers, looking up from her work. “Your son Reginald left England without swearing it.”
“My son Reginald is preparing a report for the king on the marriage of Queen Katherine and the governance of the Church of England,” I say firmly. “The king himself has commissioned it, and Reginald is going to reply. He is a scholar for the king, as he was raised to be. He is working for him. His loyalty cannot be questioned, and nor can mine.”
“Oh, of course,” Jane says with a little smile, bending her head to her work. “I didn’t mean to suggest anything other.”
I see Montague at dinner but I cannot easily speak with him until the tables are cleared away and the music starts for dancing. The king seems to be happy as he watches Jane dance with her ladies, and then, when they beg him, he rises to his feet and invites one of the pretty new girls to dance with him.
I find I am watching him almost as if he were a stranger. He is very unlike the prince whom we all loved so much, when his mother was alive and he was a second son, a long, long time ago, forty years ago. He has grown very broad; his legs which were so strong and supple are curved now, the calf muscles bulge under a straining blue garter. His belly is rounded under the jacket, but the jacket is so padded and thickly stitched that he looks grand rather than fat. His shoulders are wide as any great sportsman’s under the buckram wadding and the frame of this and the cloth overlaid makes him so big that he can only pass through a double door when it is fully opened. His rich mop of ginger curls is thinning and though he has it carefully combed and curled, still the scalp shines palely through. His beard, starting to be flecked with gray, is growing sparse and curly. Katherine would never let him wear a beard, she complained that it scratched her face. This queen can deny him nothing, and would not dare complain.
And his face—his face, flushed now with his awkward dancing, beaming at the young woman peeping up at him, as if she can think of no greater delight than a man old enough to be her father squeezing her hand and holding her close when the dance allows them to come together—it is his face that makes me hesitate.
He doesn’t look like Elizabeth’s son anymore. The clean beauty of her family profile, our family profile, is smudged by the fat of his cheeks, of his chin. Her defined features are blurred in the collapsing face of her darling Prince Harry. His eyes look smaller in his puffed cheeks, his rosebud mouth is now pursed so often in disapproval that he looks mean. He is still a handsome man, this is still a handsome face, but the expression is not handsome. He looks petty, he looks self-indulgent. Not his mother, not any of our line were ever petty. They were kings and queens on a grand scale; this, their descendant, though he dresses so richly, though he presents himself as such a great power, is—under the padding, under the fat—a little man, with the spite and vindictiveness of a little man. Our trouble, the court’s trouble, the country’s trouble, is that we have given this small-minded bully the power of the Pope and the army of the king.
“You look very grave, Lady Pole,” Nicholas Carew remarks to me.
At once I move my gaze from the king and smile. “I was miles away,” I say.
“Indeed, I know of one that I wish was miles away tonight,” he says quietly.
“Oh, do you?”
“I can help you with saving her,” he says earnestly.
“We can’t talk of this now, not here,” I say. “Not after today.”
He nods. “I’ll come to your rooms after breakfast tomorrow, if I may.”
I wait but he doesn’t come. I can’t be seen to be looking for him, so I go out riding with the ladies of the queen’s court, and when we meet with the gentleman for a picnic by the river, I sit at the ladies’ table and barely glance towards the court. I can see at once that he’s not there.
At once I look for Montague. The king is at the top table, Queen Jane beside him. He is noisy, laughing, calling for more wine and praising the chef; a huge pastry dish is before him, and he is eating the meat from the inside with the long golden serving spoon, proffering it to Jane, dribbling gravy on her fine gown. I see in a moment that Montague is missing. He is not at the top table, nor with the other gentlemen of the privy chamber. I can feel the sweat prick under my arms and chill. I look at the dozen or so young men and I think that more than Montague and Carew are missing, but I cannot at once see who is absent. It reminds me of the time once before when I looked for Montague, and Thomas More told me that he was exiled from court. Now Thomas More has gone forever, and once again, I don’t know if my son is safe.
“You’re looking for your son.” Jane Boleyn, seated opposite me, spears a slice of roasted meat on her fork and nibbles the end of it, dainty as a French princess.
“Yes, I expected him to be here.”
“You need not worry. His horse went lame and he went back,” Jane volunteers. “I don’t think he has been taken with the others.”
I look at her slight, teasing smile. “What others?” I ask. “What are you saying?”
Her dark eyes are limpid. “Why, Thomas Cheyney and John Russell have been taken for questioning. Lord Cromwell believes that they have been plotting to encourage Lady Mary to defy her father.”
“That’s not possible,” I say coldly. “They are loyal servants to the king, and what you are describing would be treason.”
She looks directly at me, a mischievous twinkle in her beautiful dark eyes. “I suppose it would. And anyway, there is worse.”
“What can be worse than this, Lady Rochford?”
“Nicholas Carew has been arrested. Would you have thought him a traitor?”
“I don’t know,” I say stupidly.
“And, your friend who served Lady Mary in your household, the wife of the chamberlain, your friend Lady Anne Hussey! She has been arrested for plotting and been taken to the Tower. I fear that they are going to arrest everyone who prided themselves on being Lady Mary’s friend. I pray that no one suspects you.”
“I thank you for your prayers,” I say. “I hope I never need them.”
Montague comes to my rooms before dinner that evening, and I go towards him and lean my forehead against his shoulder. “Hold me,” I say.
He is always shy with me. Geoffrey will take me in a great hug, but Montague is always more reticent. “Hold me,” I say again. “I was very afraid today.”
“We’re safe so far. No one has betrayed us and no one doubts your loyalty to the king. Henry Courtenay is not arrested, just dismissed from the Privy Council under suspicion. William Fitzwilliam with him. Francis Bryan will be released.”
I take my seat.
“We can’t get the princess away now,” Montague says. “Courtenay’s man has been taken, disappeared from the stables. There’s no one with a key to her door, and no one can get her out of the house. Carew had a maid in his pay but we can’t reach her without him. He’s under arrest but I don’t know where. We’ll have to wait.”